Ottolenghi’s Mediterranean Feast: Istanbul

On Friday night, after a particularly crazy week at work, I finally collapsed into bed to watch the episode of Ottolenghi’s Mediterranean Feast where Yotam visits Istanbul. I’m a big fan of this series, even though the miles-long ingredient lists in his recipes annoy the pants off me. On an icy November night, an hour of drooling over Ottolenghi’s pick of Istanbul’s cuisine brought some sunshine back into my life.

Most of the recipes he tried out on the show seemed to involve, as usual, a lot more ingredients than I’d ever usually cook with. Although I appreciate carefully and creatively flavoured food, I’m definitely a girl of simple tastes. But this does make me wonder if I’m doing something wrong? This dish, for example, of fried vegetables with a garlic yoghurt dressing, is one I’ve made before– but probably with a quarter of the ingredients. Maybe next time I’ll try something more like this… but I do wonder how he sources all of those bloody ingredients!

My personal highlight of the episode were:

The incredible dish made out of courgette-flowers – something I’m going to be hunting down come next year’s courgette season!

The bit about how baklava is made. M constantly tells me that making baklava is easy and something I could definitely learn. Well. This is the first time I’ve seen the process, rather than read about it, and I think I can conclusively say that I will not be making baklava myself any time soon. I did love the pouring of the butter and honey though… nom, nom, nom.

12 thoughts on “Ottolenghi’s Mediterranean Feast: Istanbul”

Hi Josephine —
Lahmacun is one of my favorite foods of all time — the photo you post is beautiful! And I hear you on baklava, although I was inspired to try it after I got back from Turkey this summer, and I know you won’t believe me, but it really was easy! And I find that it’s very forgiving — I’ve made it a few times, imperfectly and with very few ingredients, and it was delicious every time.
Thanks for a great post!
-Karen

Thanks Karen! I wish I could claim credit for the picture, but it’s from the series… And have you tried making lahmacun before? I haven’t, but Ottolenghi made it look SO easy! And you’ve inspired me to try baklava- watch out for it soon…

I haven’t tried lahmacun — I can’t decide if I want to, or if I want it to be a special thing that I only get there. :) I decided to overcome my fear of filo, first with some caponata and goat cheese filo pockets, then baklava. Turns out that it’s really just time-consuming rather than difficult. You probably know this, but if you keep the filo covered with a wet towel and replace the towel every time you take a sheet out, it stays slightly damp and easier to work with. Seriously, I’m not a perfectionist, I kind of guessed on the filling amounts, I didn’t have the right size of pan, and the baklava was still delicious. Good luck! Can’t wait to hear about it if you try it!

That’s a good point! But it does look like a quick and easy dinner… Good tip on the filo handling, I’ll bear that in mind. What scared me in the show was all that wafting of wafer thin sheets of pastry and flinging of flour. Don’t get me wrong, it looked great fun, just not sure it’d turn into something tasty…!

I love watching Ottolengthi’s Mediterranean Feast in Istanbul! Was such a good programme that I tried making Lahmacun and just posted it on my blog now :) I’m Turkish myself and remember making it as a child but we used leftover pitta bread (too lazy to make the dough) which became much more quicker and simpler to make, you can check it out on my blog if you like, it’s less ingredients than Yotam as traditional Turkish Lahmacun don’t really have any nuts or molasses in it.
For those that tried making baklava, I take my hat off to you guys!!

Up til now, I’ve toddled down to the neighborhood Turkish restaurant and ordered it. Unfortunately, I have not had a Turkish Doner Kabap in my neighborhood for a few months. But tonight, I am going to make it using recipes from the internets, and use ground goat!

Well, I used the Allrecipes.com recipe, but only loosely. Besides the goat, I left out the tomato paste, and just went free form with the basic spices. I’ve found that you can make very credible flat breads in a bread machine on “dough” cycle. I use 8 ounces of water, a long squirt of honey, a teaspoon and a half of seasoned salt, 3 cups of flour and 3 teaspoons of yeast. I baked the whole thing on 500 degrees for 15 minutes and topped it with a cup of yoghurt mixed with half a cucumber, a clove of garlic chopped and a half of a lemon squeezed in it, and 2 cups of chopped red cabbage. It turned out delicious.